Today’s Housing Bubble Story – San Jose Home Prices Down 6% Since June

National home prices are likely to fall below where they were in late 2005, the chief economist for the National Association of Realtors said Thursday.
The same trend could occur in the Bay Area, local experts said, reflecting a broad-based market shift in which homes for sale generally outnumber eager buyers.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a drop in prices of 10 or 15 percent by the end of the year, from the peak,” said Edwin Resuello, president of the Santa Clara County Association of Realtors, referring to home prices countywide.

You know the boom is over when even the brokers start predicting lower prices. That was true of the stock-market bubble in 2001, and it’s true now, as the air comes out of housing.
… Other forecasters are less sanguine than the Realtors. Global Insight, the economics firm with offices in Eddystone, found prices falling even in parts of the country where housing has been relatively tame.
In Michigan, Ohio and Indiana – some of the flattest real estate markets in the country – “modest gains have given way to losses as mortgage rates rise and economic conditions soften,” the Global Insight team reported.